When the State Employees Credit Union buys local, it buys a lot of local.

The Raleigh-based credit union announced Monday that it is purchasing 8,000 PCs from Lenovo, which will assemble them at its Guilford County plant.

SECU spokeswoman Leigh Brady said Lenovo’s North Carolina operations were a significant factor in the not-for-profit’s decision to purchase the PCs from Lenovo, which is the No. 1 PC company worldwide.

“It’s helping to keep jobs in North Carolina,” said Brady.

The PCs that the credit union is buying from Lenovo also exceed the government’s Energy Star specifications for energy-efficiency.

Lenovo, in addition to its Guilford County plant that opened in October 2012, also has a headquarters in Morrisville that employs about 2,200 workers. Moreover, the Chinese company's presence in North Carolina will nearly double when it completes its acquisition of a line of servers from IBM.

The PCs that SECU is purchasing will replace existing units at its 253 branches and 5 operations centers across the state. SECU, which caters to state employees and their families, serves nearly 1.9 million members.

“It’s been four to five years since we did a refresh on all of our PCs, so it was time,” Brady said.

All of the PCs are scheduled to be delivered this year. SECU hopes to have about 6,500 of them installed by the end of April, Brady said.